An attention-grabbing experiment in financial brinksmanship by state Sen. Shirley Huntley has revealed her own ties to predatory lenders who have been the bane of her district.How one politician made a mess of her mortgage
Huntley announced on Feb. 27 she had deliberately defaulted on her mortgage to get a firsthand feel for her constituents' struggles. But by March 10 - a day before stiff penalties were to kick in - she bailed out, the Daily News has learned.
Property records also showed she had previously taken several risky loans from subprime lenders blamed for defaults in her Jamaica district.
Twice before, Huntley had narrowly avoided losing her home to foreclosure. She said those situations were created by unanticipated bills from family medical expenses.
But The News discovered she had refinanced her home with 10 lenders over 30 years.
Huntley's original mortgage in 1976 was $28,500. Three decades later, she owes $290,000 due to repeated borrowing against her home, property records show.
Huntley admitted, "I used my house as money" in the past. But the lenders were not the problem, she said.
"Frankly, I thought it didn't matter where you got a mortgage."
The recent experiment was to see what steps, if any, banks like her current lender, Wells Fargo, took to communicate with owners in default, she said.
4 comments:
Over 140 years past the end of the American Civil War and we still see some African Americans
setting a bad example for their
own people whom,in this case,
they're supposed to represent.
She's just a
modern day carpet bagger who's
bilking her own!
This is the kind of "jive turkey"
that insults the hard working
people in her district.
AS we said many many times, being smart is not considered an asset in politics - indeed, its often considered a liability.
Loyalty. Blind loyalty. Thats the ticket!
Wanna bet her "experiment" was spin to cover up what she knew was gonna become public info?
Maybe the fact that politicians aren't any smarter than the average American is one reason so many of them are now calling for the government to bail out homeowners.
A lot of bureaucrats may be in trouble with their mortgages and facing foreclosure themselves! How ironic.
But now that they've made a living on taking money from the public, they're just proposing doing more of the same to bail them out of their own messes.
Thinking for yourself is definitely a liability in politics. Better just to respond to the same advertising messages bombarded at your constituents, and get that subprime mortgage you've always wanted.
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